Kellogg Awards $21.7 Million for Adoption Project

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded $21.7 million in grants to
nine groups under a grant program designed to spur reform of state
adoption and foster-care systems.

The nine "Families for Kids" sites will work to insure that more
children in foster care are placed with permanent adoptive families,
said Valora Washington, a vice president of the foundation.

"The reforms advanced by the Families for Kids projects hold great
promise for our children and for the nation's child-welfare systems,"
she said.

The Battle Creek, Mich., foundation unveiled the grant program two
years ago, issuing a nationwide request for proposals. (See Education
Week, 03/25/92.)

The foundation awarded one-year planning grants last year to 19
projects in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Late last month,
nine of the projects received implementation grants ranging from $1
million to $3 million each.

Five Objectives

The Kellogg Foundation's new grant recipients will be expected to
meet five objectives: help families solve their own problems; better
coordinate various family services; link families with one team of
caseworkers; assign children to a single foster home in their own
neighborhood; and place children in a permanent home within one year of
entry into the foster-care system.

The foundation also awarded:

$250,000 to the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg,
Va., to help state supreme courts streamline the handling of cases
involving children and their families; and

$1.56 million to the University of Michigan law school to provide
technical assistance to the nine projects, to promote teaching of
child-welfare issues in law schools, and to establish fellowships in
child-welfare law.

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